


Stone Cold and Untouchable

by WitchWarren



Series: Shapeshifter AU [5]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Shapeshifter & Unleashed - Ali Sparkes
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, As well as some repurposed main characters, Finally I get to use a stock tag, First Meetings, Kid Fic, Maybe - Freeform, There are a couple of OCs in here, Unsure on the plural
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-15
Packaged: 2018-05-26 09:40:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6233641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WitchWarren/pseuds/WitchWarren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Agent Phil Coulson first met Darcy Lewis in New Mexico.</p>
<p>Actually that’s not true.</p>
<p>They’d met before</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

_Agent Phil Coulson is stone cold and untouchable._

 

* * *

 

Phil Coulson first met Darcy Lewis in a hospital room in Portland. Three pounds, twenty-one ounces, eleven inches long and held imperiously by her mother.

Looking at her in sheer incredulity and more than a little fear and so much love. Already there, spilling over and bubbling up inside when he’d expected to feel nothing.

He’d recognise her anywhere. In that moment, her walking towards him, everything slowed. Instantly he was transported to sixteen and tortured, watching a girl-child-woman unlike any other walk towards him under moonlight. That one burning moment of clarity and realisation. Each time was memorable if only for the rarity in understanding when your life has changed so drastically.

Phil remembered every moment his life had changed drastically. Knew them as they happened. All but one.

Love-at-first sight was a hard thing to recognise after all.

Peering into the swaddled and miniscule features had been a revelation, and he had looked up at Rita – regal and feral and held up sheer force of will – and marvelled at this woman.

“Look what you did.”

“Look what _we_ did.” Grinning she held a hand out to Spencer, and husband and wife turned to him, “We have more family now. And I’m going to keep giving you both more and more.”

Phil will forever deny that bursting into tears terrified the nurse and doctor.

But really what else was he supposed to do when this damn family kept forcing him to feel…?

 

More like inspiring him really.


	2. The Children

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They won his heart as soon as they could. And then again every chance they could get.

The undeniable fact is that Phil Coulson is capable of touching another living creature and taking everything from them. Energy, talent, ability, speech, motor control, life. Phil has seen and even implemented many of these abilities.

Mostly in grown men and women.

_But an infant—_

He didn’t even want to _attempt_ physical contact with Darcy but unfortunately she was her mother’s daughter in more ways than one. Boisterous and imperious and crashing into him as soon as she could. And then every chance she could get.

Phil fell in love with her all over again because of that.

The twins were a surprise in more ways than one. When Rita demanded to know why he ripped away from her like she was one fire – patently untrue; if she was on fire he’d burn too trying to save her – Phil could only dazedly reply, too stuck on the realisation of what the unusual feeling he’d been getting from her touch was.

Oliver had been too wrapped around Nina for the ultrasound to make out and their heartbeats had been surprisingly in sync.

That birth was long and complicated in a way that had Phil clasping his hands together and praying for the first time in his life. The arduous surgery afterwards left him badly shaken and pale.

In the end Noll had uncurled from to reveal Nin and medical personnel rushed to make sure all three patients were healthy and strong.

Julie had been the last surprise in the face of their ‘No more’ consensus. Phil hadn’t been around to sense or even smell the change. With a womb too weak for abortion, a body confined to bedrest, and a lingering sense of doom, Phil had watched over Rita like a man possessed.

Obsessed.

He’d come to a ruthless decision. In the night when the couple were asleep and unaware he’d placed hands on Rita, prepared to do the worst. The kaleidoscope that erupted under his palms surprised him.

 

Phil named her Julie, for the mother he’d never known.

 

And on his bar mitzvah Phil renamed him Jordan, for that day he became a man.


	3. Secret History

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s sixteen. It’s dark, he’s covered in blood and surrounded by the bodies of boys.
> 
>  
> 
> “See?” She asks, as if she hasn’t just kicked him off a cliff.

Phil first meets Rita de Fontaine in a clearing in the woods outside a town north of Portland. He’s sixteen. It’s dark, he’s covered in blood and surrounded by the bodies of boys that strapped him to a chair and force fed him dogfood until he puked last week. They may not all be alive. He feels nothing.

Suddenly there’s a noise and a girl is striding towards him unsurprised and unafraid.

_There’s a_

Eyes wide and alarmed Phil turns and runs, unshifted and unthinking. He doesn’t stop until he’s at a cliff. A high cliff overlooking treacherous November water.

She saw…

Maybe this would be the best option for him. The way he is, what he is, how he feels – all cold and dead inside, malformed and unfeeling. Even from birth.

“That won’t work.”

He barely has time to register the words before something _forces_ him off the cliff.

Fierce instinct grips him and Phil flips aligning himself with the wind and _shifts_ like he’s never done before. Intent and purpose has him triumphantly screeching out into the night. This is dangerous. Its midwinter and the middle of the night. There are no warm daylight updrafts to lift him and the cold sea winds add an extra weight that wrenches his wings briefly and then he’s _clear_. Skimming the sea spray and diving between the waves. Wings straining, lungs burning, flapping. Doing barrel rolls and crying his delight to the sky. Circling higher and higher he finally breaks cloud cover, or the clouds part on their own. All he knows is that the moon is out and he spies prey/not prey/movement. A girl with her face upturned towards him human/teeth/threat/smile/what and lights in the distance. Prey/not prey/movement and an arm is lifted in his direction perch/not perch/nest? Makes him dive and land a few feet away from her. Far enough away he could run if need be. She doesn’t stop smiling but drops the arm.

“See?” She asks, as if she hasn’t just kicked him off a cliff. “You can’t kill yourself this way; you’ll just shift mid-fall. It’s the same with drowning. _No one_ has non-existent survival instincts. Just death wishes.”

But he feels alive. Alive for the first time in a year. Alive for the first time since he was taken. For the first time since he’d sunk his teeth into his father’s neck, shifted and _pulled_.

Alive and relieved.

And suddenly concerned.

“The boys—”

“They’re alive, if a little badly injured. A series of events a few hours before have already alerted Chief Swanson to their absence from their beds.” The as yet unidentified girl says, pulling a tape recorder from her back pocket;

 _“Officers you gotta help! I heard screaming! I’m on the side Mercy Forest, the woods!”_ The recording sounds harsh, like it was done while running, and the speaker doesn’t leave time for pauses. _“I think a bear got them! It sounded like kids! Help!”_

Cutting off it plays what sound like running footsteps before its silent.

“It’s a pity you didn’t shift and run; the tracks would be better explained. But it you fly back home now you can have an alibi for when Swanson comes round yours. And you know he will.” Her eyes flicker down and up. “I’d throw those shoes in the sea right now if I were you.”

There was only one question to ask.

“How did you know…?”

“I know a lot of things, including why you didn’t wanna die or commit homicide. Not that you’re not perfectly capable but…” She paused to look through him, and he shivered, “It seems sacred to you. Besides; why waste super mega cool abilities on murder? You’d be better off following me out of this town.”

“And why is that?”

She paused again before uttering a phrase that would shock him completely.

 

 

 

Later, as the boys were being medevac’d to Portland, Sherriff Swanson would find the lonely little Coulson boy in the lonely little Coulson manor.

And as he drove away, a girl would let herself in through the back door.

 

 

A week later Phil stole a red corvette she named.

A month later he finally learnt her name.

 

And they both disappeared for five years.

 

 

 

The rest is secret history only those two know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I've decided this is just going to be the place I dump my related drabbles considering I lost most of them in laptop incompetence.


End file.
